Ethan had believed the authorities in Israel when they told him that he would receive temporary residency status in Uganda on condition that he left Israel, but for the past few months he has been living in Uganda without legal status, and in a state of great uncertainty.
Officially, Israel is not commenting on any agreement regarding asylum seekers it may have made with a third country, nor does it mention Uganda anywhere in writing.
The murky policy translates into a lack of policy; the spokesman of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told Haaretz this month that Israel has no authority to ensure legal status in Uganda for asylum seekers.
Two former senior officials who were involved in these issues informed Haaretz this month that there have been no official contacts aimed at reaching any such agreement, with any African state, since 2018.
“This specious story has been recycled for years in some of the Israeli media,” is how Ofwono Opondo, a spokesman for the president of Uganda, put it. “We don’t have any discussion, plan any agreement now or in the future with Israel or any other government or country to host Eritrean refugees allegedly being relocated from any place in the world, let alone Israel.
If you have such a purported agreement or discussion even in draft form please share it with the Uganda government.” The spokesman added that if such an agreement did exist, even if in draft form, he would be happy to see it.
Haaretz has been in contact in recent months with Ethan, who has been living in the Ugandan capital Kampala. Haaretz also has been speaking with sources in the refugee aid organizations and with additional asylum seekers.
The picture emerging from these contacts makes it clear that Israel’s promises to asylum seekers that they can obtain legal status from Uganda as part of its so-called “Assisted Voluntary Return” program is at odds with facts on the ground. Routinely, those who have departed Israel are left without official status of any sort.
Those who are lucky enough to have documents in hand, quickly realize that said documents protect them only from expulsion. They do not enable them to work or travel outside Kampala.
Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority insists that this is the case in only a few isolated cases, and that asylum seekers in Uganda who want to receive legal status do in fact receive it. Moreover, sources in the authority and in human rights organizations involved with asylum seekers told Haaretz that most program participants are using the Uganda merely as a transit point on their way to another destination.
Ethan was born in 1998 in Nakoti, a small village in Eritrea close to the Ethiopian border. The family home had neither electricity nor running water. His father, who served in the army, was killed when Ethan was two years old.
When he turned 10, Ethan’s brother was imprisoned after having been convicted of taking part in a coup against the authorities. To this very day, Ethan does not know what happened to his brother.
Another brother deserted the army but was caught. Ethan decided not to wait for his turn, and fled the country at age 12. He reached Israel only coincidentally, after having traveled through Sudan and Egypt.
In a state of despair, Ethan decided to meet his girlfriend in a third country and be married there. He then planned to return to Israel until he could be reunified with her in Australia.
However, Israel does not permit asylum seekers who leave the country to re-enter. As a last resort, he agreed to go through the marriage ceremony in Uganda, via the assisted voluntary return program.
Israel launched the program in 2013. Interior minister Ayelet Shaked has said numerous times that the state was relying on this program as the primary mechanism to “persuade the infiltrators to voluntarily leave Israel for a third country,” as she put it. The procedure is simple. Asylum seekers declare at the Population and Immigration Authority that they are willing to leave. In exchange, the state provides them with a one-way plane ticket and a $3,500 grant, along with legal status in the country of destination.
Based on data of the Population and Immigration Authority made available to Haaretz, 134 asylum seekers left Israel “voluntarily” for Uganda in 2021, compared to only 77 in 2020, when coronavirus restrictions were prevalent, 413 in 2019 and 359 in 2018.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants NGO has described the program as a “quiet expulsion” in a document it disseminated. Since the program’s inception, Hotline has interviewed hundreds of asylum seekers who left Israel for a third country and testified to the lack of any opportunity to acquire legal status in those countries.
About a year after the program was launched, Haaretz reported that asylum seekers were being sent to Rwanda and Uganda without status or rights. In 2018, a Haaretz correspondent visited Uganda and spoke with over 15 of the asylum seekers, who confirmed the claims.
“I don’t have a future here,” one told Haaretz. “I have no hope, no job. My life is ruined.” That same year, when coerced expulsion to a third country was on the agenda, President Museveni stressed to Haaretz that there was no expulsion agreement of any sort with the country, official or not.
The Immigration Authority denies the claim. Not long ago, a high-ranking source in the authority contended that all of the asylum seekers arriving in Uganda do receive legal status. “We would not let them go anywhere where they would not receive legal status, and we are in contact with them to ascertain that such is the case,” the source told Haaretz. “We see them getting married and working.”
The aid organizations are not convinced. Sigal Rosen, public policy coordinator at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, told Haaretz that “the third countries constituted a reasonable solution for those refugees who could no longer tolerate the abuse of Israeli state authorities but who could not return to their homelands, where their lives were in danger, on condition that they knew the conditions awaiting them there.”
Whatever the case may be, a majority of those leaving the country through the assisted voluntary return program make their way to either Canada or Germany. Suitable candidates receive refugee status and a work permit. Only a small percentage decide to fly to Uganda.
